Orange Earl Grey cake!

Mmm, what a flavour combination: bergamot orange and dark chocolate… This is one of my favourite cakes to make: easy, quick and never fails to impress the eater or receiver.

Cake ingredients

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 cups sugar

3 cups flour

4 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk

½ tsp salt

½ tsp baking soda

1 tbs orange zest for the cake

juice of 1 large orange

1 generous tsp Earl Grey tea leaves

Glaze ingredients

1 cup of chopped chocolate blocks, the darker the better

2 tbs unsalted butter

1 tbs heavy cream

1/4 tsp cardamom powder

the zest of 1 orange

Instructions

Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Mix together the flour, salt and baking soda in a mixing bowl; this is your dry batter. Set it aside for now.

Take a clean, empty mixing bowl and cream together the butter and sugar with a hand mixer at medium speed. When this mixture has become fluffy and light, it’s time to add the eggs, gradually one by one. The mix should look like frosting once the last egg has been added and mixed for about a minute.

In a third bowl, mix together the buttermilk, orange juice and orange zest; this is your second wet batter.

At this point I switch from using a hand mixer to a baking spatula, because we’ll be mixing the contents of the three bowls together, and they shouldn’t be over mixed. I add half of the dry batter to the butter-sugar-eggs bowl, stirring a couple of times. Then I add the buttermilk mix and stir again before adding the last half of the flour. Then stir in the Earl Grey tea leaves.

Pour into cake tin and bake for 40 minutes at 180C or until a toothpick inserted into it comes out clean.

Leave to cool in the cake tin.

While waiting for the cake to cool, make a double boiler (bain-marie).

Using the bain-marie, melt together chopped chocolate, butter, cardamom powder and heavy cream in the bain marie. Using a sauce whisk, mix until smooth. Alternatively, you can microwave it at half max power at 30 second intervals until melted.

Remove from heat.

Take the cooled cake out of the baking tin onto a wire rack. Spoon glaze over cooled cakes. Immediately sprinkle orange zest on top. Let sit for 5-10 minutes to set.